"Bérylune or Berlingot, as you please, ma'am, but I know what I'm saying...."
Daddy Tyl was beginning to have enough of it:
"We must put a stop to this," he said. "I will give them a smack or two."
"Don't," said the neighbor; "it's not worth while. It's only a little fit of dreaming; they must have been sleeping in the moonbeams.... My little girl, who is very ill, is often like that...."
Mummy Tyl put aside her own anxiety for a moment and asked after the health of Neighbor Berlingot's little girl.
"She's only so-so," said the neighbor, shaking her head. "She can't get up.... The doctor says it's her nerves.... I know what would cure her, for all that. She was asking me for it only this morning, for her Christmas present...."
She hesitated a little, looked at Tyltyl with a sigh and added, in a disheartened tone:
"What can I do? It's a fancy she has...."
The others looked at one another in silence: they knew what the neighbor's words meant. Her little girl had long been saying that she would get well if Tyltyl would only give her his dove; but he was so fond of it that he refused to part with it....
"Well," said Mummy Tyl to her son, "won't you give your bird to that poor little thing? She has been dying to have it for ever so long!..."